An Inventory of Manuscripts, Transcripts, and Research Notes at
the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

The research notes, drafts, and fair
copies written by Jean Jacques Rousseau and Louise Marie Madeline Fontaine
Dupin were sold at a series of auctions held between 1951 and 1958, from which
the HRHRC acquired a major portion of Madame Dupin's work.

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas at Austin

Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential French philosophical
writers of the 18th century, was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1712. After a
peripatetic and largely self-taught youth, Rousseau arrived in Paris in 1742.
He quickly attracted the attention of Denis Diderot and was asked to contribute
to the
Encyclopédie. During the years between 1750
and 1762 he wrote those works of social and philosophical commentary for which
he is best remembered--
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The New Eloise,
Emile, and
The Social Contract. In the latter year he
fled France following his condemnation by the Parlement of Paris. Rousseau
settled briefly in Britain under the protection of David Hume, but following
their bitter disagreement he departed and returned to France in 1767. He spent
his last years of increasing eccentricity writing his autobiographical
Confessions. J. J. Rousseau died in Paris in
1778.

Louise Marie Madeline Fontaine Dupin was born in Paris on 28 October
1706 to Marie Anne Armande de Fontaine and the banker Samuel Bernard. In 1722
she married Claude Dupin; they had one son, Jacques Armand, born in 1727.
Dupin's success as a "tax farmer" and government
official enabled him to buy the chateau of Chenonceaux in 1733. At Chenonceaux
Madame Dupin cultivated a salon of artists and writers, and, by the mid-1740s,
formed the intention of writing the history of womankind. With the assistance
of Rousseau she labored on this task for several years, before abandoning it
about 1750. Madame Dupin continued to live at Chenonceaux following her
husband's death in 1769, dying there shortly after dictating her will on 20
November 1799.

Dr. Leland Thielemann was a professor of French at the University of
Texas at Austin for 20 years preceding his 1984 retirement. After receiving a
Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1950 he taught at the University of
California at Los Angeles before coming to Austin. Dr. Thielemann specialized
in 18th century French intellectual history and the Enlightenment, publishing
in such journals as the
Modern Language Quarterly and
Diderot Studies. Before his death on 24
December 1987 Dr. Thielemann spent considerable time transcribing and
organizing the HRC's Rousseau materials.

In the years between 1745 and 1749 Jean Jacques Rousseau was employed by
Louise Marie Madeline Dupin as a research assistant on her ambitious project to
delineate in print the history of women. After years of labor by Rousseau and
Madame Dupin her
Ouvrage sur les Femmes was shelved,
unfinished. The research notes, drafts, and fair copies written by Rousseau and
his employer were stored at the chateau of Chenonceaux, essentially forgotten,
until their sale at a series of auctions held between 1951 and 1958. As a
result of these sales the HRC acquired a major portion of Madame Dupin's
stillborn work.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s the late Dr. Leland Thielemann of
the University of Texas at Austin worked extensively with the Rousseau-Dupin
archive. As a result of his efforts the HRC's holdings have been brought into
line with the arrangement suggested by Anicet Sénéchal in his 1963
bibliographical article in the
Annales de la Société J.-J. Rousseau.

The Draft and Notes series consists of abstracts from published works
used as source materials, draft sections or chapters of the projected work, and
fragments and copies of various sorts. This section is largely in the hand of
Rousseau, with corrections and additions by Dupin. Leland Thielemann's
Transcriptions and Comments, the second series, presents his renderings of the
original manuscript material, with bibliographical comments and some
conjectures. The final series embraces Dr. Thielemann's rough notes and early
attempts to organize the HRC's Rousseau-Dupin archive.